Quantifying Social Justice in Energy Transition: A Policy-Driven Assessment Framework for China

Addressing climate change and promoting social justice are crucial sustainable development goals. However, the quantitative assessment of how energy transition policies impact social justice remains a significant challenge. To address this gap, we develop a novel Energy Transition Social Justice Framework (ETSJF) that integrates four dimensions (energy supply, energy demand, procedural justice, and distributive justice) and three perspectives (individual, group-organizational, and society). The ETSJF index is constructed to measure the progress of social justice in China’s energy transition from 2010 to 2021. The index exhibits a robust growth trend, increasing from 269 in 2010 to 965 in 2021, with an average annual growth rate of 12.9%. The years 2014 and 2020–2021 mark turning points, coinciding with the implementation of transformative policy initiatives and China’s carbon neutrality pledge. Employing multi-source data analysis, we evaluate the impact of energy transition policies on social justice using the Energy Transition Policy Impact Intensity (ETPII). Our analysis reveals that energy transition policies significantly positively impact overall social justice (ETPII: 1.133), with variations across dimensions. Energy supply shows the most potent effects (ETPII: 1.203), while procedural justice exhibits the weakest impact (ETPII: 0.804). These findings offer policy implications for achieving a just and inclusive energy transition. The proposed ETSJF and ETPII enable the systematic monitoring of social justice progress and offer methodological tools for policymakers to optimize energy transition policies through data-driven decision-making.